A Christmas Message from the Community Health Program

WI COVID deaths in last week: 3

Wishing you a Covid-safe Christmas, with ornaments decorated with common risk precautions: a mask, hand-washing, vaccination, testing, a fan to keep air moving.

December 23, 2022

Dear Friends:

First and and foremost, all of us here at the Community Health Program and WCC want to wish you a safe and happy Christmas. Thank you so much for your partnership and support over the past year. It means the world to us as a program and as people.

Second, here's our last respiratory illness update before Christmas. It's not all clear, but things...don't look terrible at the moment?

We're seeing just more than 1,000 COVID cases every day on average, up from the lows last spring, but not anything like the Omicron wave.

The COVID positive test rate is 10.5% as of today, a bit higher than we'd like to see.

There have been 3 deaths from COVID in the past week. Hospitalizations from COVID continue to creep up.

Hospital occupancy rates are high, but not in the critical range.

Flu continues to surge in Wisconsin, but may be leveling off. RSV continues its decline. Sadly, there was one pediatric death associated with influenza reported in the last week.

Again, I am most certainly not suggesting that everything's okay at the moment. It's not. Both COVID and flu rates remain high. It's just that they're not catastrophic, as they were last year.

More to the point, we want to keep things that way. That is to say, we want to avoid the holiday becoming a super-spreader event. So put a little present under your community Christmas tree: practice all the same precautions you've been doing, and keep everyone safe.

Stay warm and stay together,

Rev. Daniel Schultz

Community Health

Program Director